Monday, June 27, 2011

The Texas House Wants to Be Indiana

The House approved a sprawling health care savings bill Monday that abortion-rights opponents hailed as a historic step toward de-funding Planned Parenthood and limiting abortion. Democrats, though, warned the bill includes permission for Texas to join an interstate health care compact, which they said could lead to a state takeover of the management of elderly Texans' federal Medicare benefits.

Meanwhile, in the Regarbagican aspirational state of Indiana, a federal court has put on hold parts of similar anti-abortion legislation, which has had the consequence of causing doctors at Indiana University and Wishard Memorial hospitals to stop offering abortion services, "including in cases where the woman's health was at serious risk and where there was no possibility the fetus would survive," because they're unclear how to comply with the law.

The anti-choicers have evidently figured out that, failing actual criminalization of abortion, they can just create a nightmarescape of confusion about whether and how to provide abortions at all.